You are invited to follow Richard Carr McClement as he travels around the world aboard six vessels, the H.M.S Buffalo, H.M.S Hawke, H.M.S Galatea, H.M.S Duncan, H.M.S Terror and H.M.S Wellesley.

The McClement Project is a joint research initiative of UHI’s Centre for History and the Scottish Catholic Archives and is directed by Dr S Karly Kehoe. It centres on the journal of McClement, an Irishman and assistant surgeon who served with the Royal Navy between 1857 and 1869. McClement’s 400 page journal is a tremendous historical resource for students, scholars and the general public. This project is interactive - it is about making history accessible and allowing people to participate in the development of an historical project.

Some of the digitised and transcribed excerpts we provide will give you a unique opportunity to observe, through his eyes, weather fluctuations, navigational hurdles, patterns of sickness and disease, burials at sea and the Royal Navy’s attempts to police the Atlantic slave trade.

A number of themes run through this journal and a main aim of the project team is to construct scholarly analyses to show how this journal fits into broader fields such as the history of medicine, race, slavery, religion and British imperial history. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to post them to our discussion forum.